One in three children in the United States are overweight or obese.

The CDC reports that since 1980 obesity prevalence among children and adolescents has almost tripled. So what is being done to stop this? Well, some of the most influential stakeholders came together in Washington last month to actively discuss innovative ways to reverse the rising trend of childhood obesity – and guess who volunteered their time at this conference? You guessed it.

At this first of its kind summit I was charged with being a facilitator for a breakout discussion about how the private sector can help reduce current barriers that negatively affect young people’s ability to participate in before and after school activities. Cash-strapped schools generally don’t have the means to provide transportation for students to either arrive earlier or go home later if kids choose to participate in sports and extra curricular activities outside of school hours.

I participated in several preparatory meetings and phone calls, read numerous articles and opinions on the subject and took off work to volunteer at the two-day conference. As it turns out though this is either not really a problem or in fact it is such a conundrum that people truly don’t know where to begin. I say that because only one person out of the more than 700 attendees showed up to the session! “I don’t know much about these challenges and thought this could get me up to speed,” she told me as she sat alone in a sea of chairs that I had formed into a large circle. We decided not to hold the session given the turnout and our brave attendee joined another session.

My empty breakout session

Besides my rather anticlimactic session, I enjoyed the two-day experience and was particularly energized by the collective expertise and brainpower they managed to bring together. On top of that, there were memorable moments by tantalizing speakers such as First Lady Michelle Obama and Newark, NJ Mayor Corey Booker not to mention an entertaining and educational dinner program which challenged James Beard Award-winning chefs Tom Colicchio, Maria Hines, Holly Smith and Ming Tsai to create dinner meals on a SNAP (food stamp) budget of $10!To learn more about this event and other resources to help reduce childhood obesity, check out the Partnership for a Healthier America or the Alliance for a Healthier Generation.

Ever feel like supermarket prices are going through the roof? Well, those who depend on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Progam (SNAP) – formally known as Food Stamps – really feel these increases. And how do we know that the amount that SNAP provides is sufficient to meet a family’s food needs?

D.C. Hunger Solutions, a nonprofit here in the nation’s capital that works to create a hunger-free community, set out to answer this very question. On a warmer than usual November evening I found myself at their offices across from the Hilton Hotel near Dupont Circle participating in an orientation on how to visit supermarkets and record pricing data that can be used to compute whether the benefit offered through SNAP is sufficient to cover reasonable costs of buying food for low income families. They also want to find out if foods, especially high nutrient dense products, are equally available across the city regardless of socio-economic factors of the neighborhoods. The two staff members did a great job going over the process and then we were assigned a grocery store where we would record the prices for about 150 items.

Since I have a car they assigned me to a Giant Foods Store on Eastern Avenue up in Hyattsville, MD. I had Friday afternoon free and decided to go up there after lunch to do the inventory which we were told would take about an hour. I was to find very specific items and record the lowest available price for that size. So for example, I needed to find “Chocolate Drink Mix” in a 21.8 ounce package. After finding the right size, and who knew that 21.8 ounces is a pretty standard size for chocolate drink mix, I compared the prices of each one and determined that Nesquick was the cheapest at $5.59. Usually there is a store brand that is cheaper, but not in this case. Anyway, multiply that process by 150 and I ended up running up and down the aisles for about two and a half hours.

Despite some funny looks from those who saw me “shopping” for hours with no groceries to show for it, it was a good experience that helped me develop a greater respect and understanding of food pricing. When I got home I had to fill out an online form so that D.C. Hunger solutions could properly evaluate the data that I collected with data they received from the dozens of other stores from around the Greater Washington area.

If you would like to learn more about D.C. Hunger Solutions or volunteer with them, please visit their website.

Columbus Day weekend delivered quintessential fall weather here in our nation’s capital. Bright sunny days that gave way to stark autumn evenings. And if you walked down Pennsylvania Avenue– just a few short blocks from the White House – you would have smelled the aromas of gourmet food and heard the sounds of live music echoing off the governmental walls that line the street. That’s right; it’s the Taste of D.C. festival.

And after a bowl of Ben’s famous chili or a mouth-watering plate from SÂUÇÁ you might need something cold and refreshing to wash it all down with. Look no further than the Craft Beer & Wine Pavilion. Dozens of craft breweries and wineries were set up to give visitors a taste, literally, of some of the most refined libations around.

I actually worked a shift for Stoudt’s (you might remember them from Day 77 of my Year of Giving) and helped the small craft brewer introduce their brews to the palates of Washington. The beer pavilion is run by a handful of staff from the breweries themselves with the help of a small army of volunteers. Unfortunately that small army was really small and the tent would go through periods where it was severely understaffed. So I decided to go back the next day and help them out. After all a portion of the proceeds went to DC Central Kitchen, Bread for the City, Luke’s Wings, and the American Red Cross – all really good organizations.

So there I was for another shift, pouring beers and answering questions about the subtleties of the different malt beverages. “Either I’ve had too many or I think I taste something like those little banana flavored Runts candies,” a bearded thirty-something guy told me as he smelled and resampled Stoudt’s Heifer-in-Wheat, a Bavarian style Hefeweizen. Well, he very might be more sober than you think. No, the beer doesn’t have Runts candies, but you get some of that fruit flavor from the German yeast that is used. It’s also got a sweetness about it thanks to a generous amount of malt that goes into the brew. Although not my favorite of their 15 or so beers that they make, on a warm autumn day it’s perfection.

One in three children in the U.S. is overweight or obese according to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation. Pressure is growing on strapped for cash school systems to provide healthier meals. D.C. Public Schools has implemented a salad bar system this year and asked for volunteers to help teach students how to make a healthy salad that complies with USDA requirements for school meals.

I signed up to help out at Ballou Senior High School. Named after former D.C. superintendent of schools Dr. Frank W. Ballou, the school is located southeast of the Anacostia River and has a student body of about 1,000, nearly all of them eligible for free and reduced lunch. I parked my car in the almost empty lot next to the football field and walked up the hill toward the school passing several parked police cars. A friendly smile greeted me as the front door opened and a uniformed security guard motioned toward an airport like security checkpoint. After collecting my camera and the contents of my pockets from the other side of the x-ray machine, the same woman explained to me how to get to the cafeteria.

I made my way across the empty dimly lit cafeteria and poked my head in the kitchen. A dozen school cafeteria employees, mostly women, were busy making last-minute preparations for the second day of the school year. I was directed to Mr. Sparrow, a thirty-year veteran of the food service industry. He explained the task at hand and I, along with another volunteer named Hale, got ready for the first wave of students.

“It aint going to be easy,” Mr. Sparrow told me. “You’ve got to make sure they have a balanced meal that includes vegetables, a protein, a fruit and a grain.” Sounds easy enough, right?

Although most students chose the standard school meal, probably about 60 or 70 lined up to make a salad. Freshly prepared that morning, the salad bar looked delicious. Although students could choose from fresh romaine, arugula and endive, most stuck with the standard romaine lettuce. Zucchini sticks weren’t very popular either, despite my sales pitch to the young people. Turkey ham, eggs, bacon bits and ranch dressing were the hot items.

This young man made the healthiest salad I saw all day - all on his own! (photo: Reed Sandridge)

“Sir,” called out Mr. Sparrow to an upperclassmen dressed in the standard blue shirt and beige pants, “I need you to take a piece of fruit with you.” The student pushed back some saying that he wasn’t going to eat it. In the end he reluctantly grabbed a shiny red delicious apple and went on his way. This type of scenario played out about half the time. Sometimes they were missing fruit, other times they had loaded up on just meat and almost nothing else. Stern yet compassionate, Sparrow and his team work with the students to get it right. I secretly wondered where they found the patience to do this every single day.

An altercation erupts in the cafeteria courtyard and the half-dozen police officers on hand in the cafeteria quickly defuse it. The experienced kitchen staff is unphased; just another day.

Mr. Sparrow (right) gives some coaching to the students on their salad preparation. (photo: Reed Sandridge)

Overall it was a good experience. It had been a while since I had been in a school cafeteria. Although I applaud Ballou and DC Public Schools for taking on this initiative, I believe they will need additional help to make this work properly. Just keeping the salad bar looking presentable is a full-time job for one worker who was busy restocking and cleaning up spilled toppings. They need someone for the foreseeable future helping students build a healthy lunch. As students head back to school tomorrow, the volunteers won’t be there anymore and I am afraid Mr. Sparrow and his team will be stretched too thin.

Check out this video that DC Public Schools put together to help volunteers learn how to build salads that qualify under USDA guidelines as a school meal. I thought it was pretty good!

Here is a link to some other photographs that I took. I will have more uploaded later this week.

50.2 million Americans live in food insecure households, 33 million adults and 17.2 million children. Feeding America goes on to report that 7.8 percent of seniors living alone were also food insecure. Arkansas, Mississippi and Texas all report more than 17% of their households facing food insecurity. Washington, DC checks in at 12.9%. Least affected by this challenge is North Dakota that reports only 6.7 percent of households living with food insecurity.

I’ve been fortunate my entire life not to have to worry about where my next meal would come from, but as you can see above, many people in this rich country are not so fortunate.

One of the most impressive models for helping feed those in need is DC Central Kitchen. Although I had been aware of this organization for several years, it wasn’t until July 27th of last year when I gave $10 to their founder, Robert Egger, that I started to realize how amazing this organization really is. Check out what Robert did with the $10! It will blow you away.

Two weeks ago history was made – at least for DC Central Kitchen. At the DC Convention Center the largest specialty food and beverage show in North America was wrapping up. Thousands of exhibitors filled the exhibition hall with their mouth-watering offerings. From Theo Chocolate’s organic, Fair Trade-certified Madagascar sourced chocolate to melt in our mouth Spanish Serrano ham from Fermin, if you like food, welcome to heaven! When the last attendees get ushered out and booths begin to tear down their displays, there would still be hundreds of thousands of pounds of perfectly good food and beverage products on the show floor. For a variety of reasons, it’s often difficult for these companies to ship the food back to their warehouse so they simply leave it behind.

That’s where DC Central Kitchen stepped in and seized and opportunity by working out an arrangement where they would pick up unwanted food and turn it into meals for the thousands of households in the DC area who depend on them for nourishment.

They assembled a small benevolent army of about 150 people made up of employees of the kitchen and volunteers like myself. Our mission was to comb the aisles collecting food that the exhibitors had designated for donation.

It’s a bit of a race against the clock. Perishable foods must be removed within two hours and then we only had about another six hours to collect the rest of the food and transport it across the titanic show floor while dodging forklifts and workers removing miles of carpet from beneath our feet. Then we had to load all the food onto pallets and wrap them in cellophane so that they could be loaded onto waiting trucks. To give you an idea of the chaos, keep in mind that the show floor is 700,000 square feet and has a wingspan that covers six city blocks! So making a run from one side to the other was no easy task.

One funny moment was when I was looking for some large boxes and heard a gentleman with a distinct Spanish accent saying, “Look at that – I turned a hexagon box into a rectangular one!”

“I know this guy,” I thought.

He handed me a box and then I realized I did know him – well not personally, but it was famed chef and restaurateur José Andrés! I’ve dined in his restaurants, watched him on TV and even prepared tapas from his cookbook but I had no idea of his newest talent of transforming unusable boxes into perfect containers for our collection. There was no time to be “star-struck” though and I grabbed the boxes and headed off to collect more food.

Volunteers packaged 150,000 pounds of donated food!

When the last pallet was wrapped we had collected over 150,000 pounds of food – the largest single food donation that Robert’s organization has ever received! DC Central Kitchen shared the historic donation with DC Food Bank and other community organizations that help provide meals to area residents in need.

Some of the 150 volunteers who made it happen. (photo: dccentralkitchen.org)

Although this was an amazing day for DC Central Kitchen, this was not a typical day and the organization needs your support. They are much more than a kitchen too – they provide training and jobs for the communities unemployed and homeless. Click here to find out how you can volunteer or support them financially.

Just beyond the beltway of Washington, DC, Congressional Country Club was selected to host this year’s US Open. The United States Golf Association, the organizers of the Father’s Day classic, provides concession stands around the course that are manned primarily by volunteers. In turn, a percentage of the proceeds go toward those organizations that work the stands.

Hands’sOn Greater DC Cares, the leading mobilizer of volunteers in the Greater DC area, asked for volunteers to help out and raise money for their organization. I’ve volunteered at several of their service days and always been impressed with them so I was happy to help them out.

Now this may sound like a piece of cake, right? How hard could selling a few cold beers and hotdogs to a bunch of golf enthusiasts be? Well, you’re right it isn’t so hard, however it does require a lot of volunteers and a well-coordinated operation to serve the 230,000 attendees.

After parking nearly 40 minutes away and taking a special shuttle to Congressional, I got checked in, tied an apron on and found myself pulling cold drinks and hot food for the cashiers. After about three hours of this I had to change jobs as my knee was failing me – I tore my meniscus two months ago playing softball. Anyway, I closed out the rest of the day running the register.

All in all it was a good experience despite the scorching heat and lack of breaks throughout the eight-hour shift. We were slammed for five to six hours solid.

I have no idea how much Greater DC Cares received – hopefully a healthy amount.

Rory McIlroy holds aloft the U.S. Open trophy after winning the championship at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., Sunday, June 19, 2011. (Drew Angerer/The Washington Times)

Volunteers receive a nice perk – they are free to watch the golf play before and after their shift. I headed over to the 18th hole with fellow YoG volunteer and former Kindness Investor Maria D. We watched the golfers wrap up the second to last day of golf at the final hole. The last pair to putt and wave to the fans was South Korea’s Y.E. Yang and 22–year-old tournament winner Rory McIlroy who set a record with a 16-under finish.

This weekend we had a snapshot of the cold that awaits us this winter. This morning it was near freezing when I went to the gym.

Today’s post took place during a really busy work wise. Long days followed by work related events in the evening. After an event at the Brazilian embassy, I headed across town to meet up with a friend of mine from Spain who I hadn’t seen for years. Although it was late, this was our only chance to meet up so you push yourself a little and try to squeeze everything in.

Exhausted, I hailed a cab home to my apartment in Dupont. The driver was a man named Tekele. He was really nice and I enjoyed talking with him. Originally from Ethiopia, he’s been driving a cab here in DC for 18 years. Before that he worked almost nine years for PMI, a leading parking management firm. “I like driving a taxi very much,” he told me. “But you have to be really disciplined to do well at this,” since you work your own hours and set your own schedule for the most part.

Having been in the business for such a long time, he has seen it all. “Just other day a guy got in my cab and told me to go to Georgia Avenue,” he began to tell me. “Then he fell asleep. When we got there I tried to wake him up but he was really sleeping hard.” Tekele finally got the man out of his cab.

There is a large Ethiopian community in DC. Tekele says that many people like himself fled his homeland as a result of the civil war that began there in the 70s. “I originally escaped to Italy,” he told me explaining that he spent six months there until Catholic Charities arranged for him to come to the United States. He hasn’t traveled back to Ethiopia much. “It’s so expensive especially with kids,” the father of three told me.

Ethiopian platter at Etete

I shared with him that I had tried Ethiopian food many years ago and didn’t care for it. This is odd too because I like almost all kinds of foods from other countries. Especially spicy food, like Ethiopian food. I guess I just had a bad experience because I recently went to a place called Etete at the corner of 9th and U Streets and tried it again and really enjoyed it. The injera, a spongy flatbread made with a thin sourdough batter, took a little getting used to. “Etete is a good place,” Tekele confirmed.

We got to my place and I explained my Year of Giving to him and asked him to accept my $10. He agreed and I paid him the fare and tip plus the ten dollars.

I got home and realized I totally forgot to ask him what he was going to do with the money! It was late and I was really tired. He had given me his cell number so I called him on Sunday October 31st and asked him. He was happy to hear from me and explained that he had donated the money to his local Virginia police department. Hopefully he gave it to the actual department and not the Fraternal Order of Police. I’ve had a very bad experience with the telephone solicitors from that organization and no longer give to them.

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